JPMorgan’s $6 Billion Case of Lyme Disease

Excerpted from Forbes ( Posted: 05/22/2012)

We’ve run many stories at Forbes parsing the reasons for JPMorgan’s multibillion-dollar trading loss this month. As the days tick past, analysts and journalists continue to struggle to comprehend and explain the complex hedging strategy that did so much damage at the venerable bank.

But on Sunday, The New York Times had a front-page piece that brought the huge loss down to a level anyone could understand. A central reason a bank known for its mastery of risk management could make such a huge mistake: One of its top executives, chief investment officer Ina Drew, 55, succumbed to the most human of problems: She got sick, apparently with Lyme Disease and, starting in 2010, missed out on chunks of time in the office, where she had been managing clashing personalities and internal rivalries and making sure that no one took on too much risk.